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Saturday, September 10, 2011

Do I light a candle?

Ten years ago today I was working as a teacher's aide in a Special Education classroom on an Air Force Base in New Jersey. My newly minted pilot of a husband was on his last mission ready trip. It was a normal day. The sun was shining. I can't think of a more perfectly beautiful September day...but the day was already tainted. Because, before school had even started, a plane had taken off out of Boston...

A teacher poked her head into our classroom and beckoned the teacher to come into her room. This was not out of the ordinary in any way, but when the teacher re-entered our classroom, she said, "Kelly, I think there's something you need to see..."

CNN was on the television during the teacher next door's planning period. A plane had just hit the Trade Center. I didn't catch on... The ticker at the bottom then said that there was a fire at the Pentagon. I didn't catch on... Then, the reporter gave us the news that would change our nation forever, "There has been an apparent terrorist attack on the Pentagon..."

As the day progressed, parents picked their children up from school early, and our principal finally decided to have an assembly to explain to these precious military "brats" whose parents and very lives would be affected forever, that their parents were too busy defending our nations perimeters to come pick them up from school today. How do you explain that to 5th and 6th graders?

The phone lines going out of New Jersey were busy all day long. I couldn't even get a line to call my parents to see if my dad, who is a pilot for United, was still alive. The news kept saying that it was a United 767 or 777. They could not confirm it, and my dad flew 777s. Dallas's squadron was immediately called to the skies above New York City in support of the fighter planes guarding the skyline, and the Americans below...

My husband was left in Alaska as the plane he was being qualified on headed straight over to what we now simply call "the desert." And his squadron was gone... His final mission ready flight was a flight over to that desert. I sat alone on the couch as our President addressed his nation that week. He declared war on terror. I sat stone-faced, fearful, terrorized as I realized our nation was at war, and my husband had just left for it...

I watched the news. I bought the Time Magazine, and although I framed it, I have never opened its pages. I just didn't want to forget. I wanted to be able to accurately explain this day to my children, who weren't even born. But pictures and stories can't describe that day...

We traveled to Ground Zero several weeks later...ashes still smoking. Windows from surrounding buildings still blown out. Ashes, ashes, everywhere. Everywhere. Even a block away, two weeks later...ashes. It was a mass grave...Hallowed ground...an American tragedy the likes of which this country has never seen...

Dallas spent the next two years deploying-six weeks out, six weeks back, replay. There were only 2 or 3 of his planes on base out of nearly 40, and these two or three planes were to train more pilots on so they could go to "the desert." The other 37 were drilling holes in the sky 24/7 over the skies on the other side of the world. Even on Thanksgiving...even on Christmas...even on our anniversary... No one was home. It looked like a ghost town on base. As husbands deployed, wives with young children would go home to live with their parents...

It has been ten years. We have had three kids. Dallas is no longer in the Air Force.

Tate and Naomi's school requested that all the children wear red, white and blue on Friday in honor of September 11th. Naomi asked why. How do I explain to a girl of not quite six WHY?! How do I tell a child who has no comprehension of 4,000+ people that "bad men who hate our country" killed that many Americans in one day? How do I explain that the towers fell that day...that people jumped out of them to escape the heat? That the Pentagon fell that day? That more would have fallen had the passengers not taken that other plane down in Pennsylvania? How do you explain that to your children who weren't even born ten years ago? Words cannot explain...

Do I dig out the framed Time Magazine to look at the pictures I could not look at ten years ago? Do I even want to open that magazine? Do I really want to remember anymore? Do I really want to tell my children what happened? It was so long ago...a lifetime ago...

Still, I know that as hard as this day is for me to remember, thousands and thousands of families have been directly impacted by the events that took place on that day. I grieve with them and for them "...mourn with those who mourn." Romans 12:15.

For the military families with men and women who are deployed and have deployed for these past 10 years in defense of our country, I pray,

"You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day...a thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you. You will only observe with your eyes and see the punishment of the wicked." Psalm 91: 5-8